Anti-Lock Brakes, Cell Phones and Rear View Mirrors
(a sermon preached at FBC in Essex on March 21, 2010)
At the end of a song written by Michael Card as a tribute to his preacher Grandfather, Card includes some words from a sermon preached by his Grandfather. These are the words: “I have no hope except that I believe that Christ died for my sins according to scripture. I expect to swing out into eternity on that.” That, my friends, along with the legacy he left in his grandson, who I believe is one of the best songwriters in Christian music today, is what it means to leave boldly.
Now, from that very sacred description of what it means to leave boldly move with me to a more secular telling. Imagine a young man who walks his date to the door and says goodnight with a kiss. The evening was spectacular, both of them felt great about the way their relationship was developing and they had plans to see each other again in a couple of days. So he kisses her goodnight and runs down the walkway to his car and peels out , burning rubber all the way to the stop sign at the end of the block. You could say he left boldly (maybe a little too boldly for her parents).
When I was learning to drive, it was before anti-lock brakes. In fact, sometimes we just stuck our foot out the door and dragged it along the pavement to slow the car down. Today we have anti-lock brakes to keep our brakes from locking up and sending us into a skid or a spin and allow us to either let off on the brake and still have some directional control of the vehicle, or to continue applying the brake and stop even more quickly than the old style brakes that we would have had to keep pumping.
Today life moves (goes by) much faster than it did when I was learning to drive, so we dare not now (if we ever did) stick our foot our to try to stop the car. Because of the speed at which we live today, the book which some of us are reading titled One Month to Live:Thirty Days to a No-Regrets Life, makes me think that getting the news that you only had thirty days to live would be like having traffic come to a screeching halt in front of you while you are traveling along I-95 at the 65 MPH speed limit. Were that to happen to you, you would be happy to have anti-lock brakes, because probably the first thing you would do would be to hit your brakes. When my Mother was in the hospital with pneumonia, bronchitis and the doctors were telling her that she had developed c.o.p.d. (chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder), they also told her that if she didn’t stop smoking she had only a short time to live. Immediately she hit the brakes and quit her 45 year smoking habit cold turkey. She lived another 15 years. Because of that she got to meet Valerie and she lived to see her granddaughter Elisa and she was able to leave a little of herself in their lives and a little more of herself in mine.
Life does indeed come at us fast, and when it looks like the lane in which you are traveling is coming to a stop, the second thing most of us would do after putting our foot on the brakes is to look in the rear view mirrors to see what chance we have of switching lanes. This is exactly what my mother did. She looked back and saw her children, remembered her marriage, reflected on what she loved about living and decided to try to live a little longer by changing lanes. I’m so glad she did.
What are you seeing when you look in the rear view mirror of your life? Certainly the answer to that question is going to be different for each of us. But there is a sense in which the answer is the same for each of us. What you see there is the legacy you will leave behind when you leave this earth. The one who can leave boldly is the one who has no regrets about what they see in that rearview mirror.
People who teach driving will tell you that it is just as important to know what is behind you as it is to know what is in front of you. That is why they counsel checking your mirrors often, and not only when you are backing up. One of the increasingly popular features of newer model cars is camera that shows you what is behind you as you back up. Someday we’ll probably have a screen that will show us the view behind and on both sides of our vehicle as we travel down the road.
Analogies and other such illustrations are only good up to a point, and then they break down. Here’s where this one breaks down: You may have a rear view mirror for your life – you may be able to look behind you and see either the good fruit of a life well-lived or the carnage of a reckless, ill-conceived life. Unlike the cars in which we drive, our lives have no reverse gear. Life is lived in Drive – moving forward. Now, as I said, analogies do break down. As I wrote this part, I was remembering the bumper sticker slogan that says, “God Allows U Turns!” and I certainly won’t deny that, but I will observe that in life, as in driving, a U turn allows and requires you to face what’s past head on.
You know that mirror on the right hand side of your car? When you look in that mirror, at least on newer cars, you’ll see a message that warns you that objects in this mirror are closer than they appear. That message, along with checking your mirrors often are good messages for driving or for life.
I’m glad we have improved the braking systems in our cars with anti-lock brakes, and I’m glad that our mirrors with anti-glare features give us the opportunity to see clearly what is behind us day or night. And, while I am happy to have the ability that our cell phones give us to be connected to our homes, our offices and our friends while we are traveling, it is becoming increasingly clear that these devices are not really helping us pay attention to either what is before or behind us.
The cell phone and other such devices with screens that beg us to look at them and require us to push buttons sometimes too small for our fingers take our attention away from where we’re going and where we’ve been. They represent the tyranny of the urgent present. The urgency that we answer them now is both a tyranny and a lie. The truth is that if we are not simultaneously giving attention to that which is before and behind us, we are not fully present in the present. So much in our lives urges us to tear down our barns and build bigger ones, to eat, drink and be merry - to get it now with no payments until 2015!!
And what does God say to the rich farmer? “You fool! This very night will your life be demanded of you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?” Or, to put those words into today’s message: “HELLO!?! DON’T YOU SEE TRAFFIC SLOWING DOWN RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU? CHECK YOUR MIRRORS! MAKE A DECISION.
Pastor Michael
Anti-Lock Brakes, Cell Phones and Rear View Mirrors
(a sermon preached at FBC in Essex on March 21, 2010)
At the end of a song written by Michael Card as a tribute to his preacher Grandfather, Card includes some words from a sermon preached by his Grandfather. These are the words: “I have no hope except that I believe that Christ died for my sins according to scripture. I expect to swing out into eternity on that.” That, my friends, along with the legacy he left in his grandson, who I believe is one of the best songwriters in Christian music today, is what it means to leave boldly.
Now, from that very sacred description of what it means to leave boldly move with me to a more secular telling. Imagine a young man who walks his date to the door and says goodnight with a kiss. The evening was spectacular, both of them felt great about the way their relationship was developing and they had plans to see each other again in a couple of days. So he kisses her goodnight and runs down the walkway to his car and peels out , burning rubber all the way to the stop sign at the end of the block. You could say he left boldly (maybe a little too boldly for her parents).
When I was learning to drive, it was before anti-lock brakes. In fact, sometimes we just stuck our foot out the door and dragged it along the pavement to slow the car down. Today we have anti-lock brakes to keep our brakes from locking up and sending us into a skid or a spin and allow us to either let off on the brake and still have some directional control of the vehicle, or to continue applying the brake and stop even more quickly than the old style brakes that we would have had to keep pumping.
Today life moves (goes by) much faster than it did when I was learning to drive, so we dare not now (if we ever did) stick our foot our to try to stop the car. Because of the speed at which we live today, the book which some of us are reading titled One Month to Live:Thirty Days to a No-Regrets Life, makes me think that getting the news that you only had thirty days to live would be like having traffic come to a screeching halt in front of you while you are traveling along I-95 at the 65 MPH speed limit. Were that to happen to you, you would be happy to have anti-lock brakes, because probably the first thing you would do would be to hit your brakes. When my Mother was in the hospital with pneumonia, bronchitis and the doctors were telling her that she had developed c.o.p.d. (chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder), they also told her that if she didn’t stop smoking she had only a short time to live. Immediately she hit the brakes and quit her 45 year smoking habit cold turkey. She lived another 15 years. Because of that she got to meet Valerie and she lived to see her granddaughter Elisa and she was able to leave a little of herself in their lives and a little more of herself in mine.
Life does indeed come at us fast, and when it looks like the lane in which you are traveling is coming to a stop, the second thing most of us would do after putting our foot on the brakes is to look in the rear view mirrors to see what chance we have of switching lanes. This is exactly what my mother did. She looked back and saw her children, remembered her marriage, reflected on what she loved about living and decided to try to live a little longer by changing lanes. I’m so glad she did.
What are you seeing when you look in the rear view mirror of your life? Certainly the answer to that question is going to be different for each of us. But there is a sense in which the answer is the same for each of us. What you see there is the legacy you will leave behind when you leave this earth. The one who can leave boldly is the one who has no regrets about what they see in that rearview mirror.
People who teach driving will tell you that it is just as important to know what is behind you as it is to know what is in front of you. That is why they counsel checking your mirrors often, and not only when you are backing up. One of the increasingly popular features of newer model cars is camera that shows you what is behind you as you back up. Someday we’ll probably have a screen that will show us the view behind and on both sides of our vehicle as we travel down the road.
Analogies and other such illustrations are only good up to a point, and then they break down. Here’s where this one breaks down: You may have a rear view mirror for your life – you may be able to look behind you and see either the good fruit of a life well-lived or the carnage of a reckless, ill-conceived life. Unlike the cars in which we drive, our lives have no reverse gear. Life is lived in Drive – moving forward. Now, as I said, analogies do break down. As I wrote this part, I was remembering the bumper sticker slogan that says, “God Allows U Turns!” and I certainly won’t deny that, but I will observe that in life, as in driving, a U turn allows and requires you to face what’s past head on.
You know that mirror on the right hand side of your car? When you look in that mirror, at least on newer cars, you’ll see a message that warns you that objects in this mirror are closer than they appear. That message, along with checking your mirrors often are good messages for driving or for life.
I’m glad we have improved the braking systems in our cars with anti-lock brakes, and I’m glad that our mirrors with anti-glare features give us the opportunity to see clearly what is behind us day or night. And, while I am happy to have the ability that our cell phones give us to be connected to our homes, our offices and our friends while we are traveling, it is becoming increasingly clear that these devices are not really helping us pay attention to either what is before or behind us.
The cell phone and other such devices with screens that beg us to look at them and require us to push buttons sometimes too small for our fingers take our attention away from where we’re going and where we’ve been. They represent the tyranny of the urgent present. The urgency that we answer them now is both a tyranny and a lie. The truth is that if we are not simultaneously giving attention to that which is before and behind us, we are not fully present in the present. So much in our lives urges us to tear down our barns and build bigger ones, to eat, drink and be merry - to get it now with no payments until 2015!!
And what does God say to the rich farmer? “You fool! This very night will your life be demanded of you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?” Or, to put those words into today’s message: “HELLO!?! DON’T YOU SEE TRAFFIC SLOWING DOWN RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU? CHECK YOUR MIRRORS! MAKE A DECISION.
Pastor Michael